Nuveen Offers Affordable Housing Tenants No-Cost Rent Credit Reporting

Nuveen Real Estate recently announced that it was providing non-cost rent reporting to credit agencies to help “residents of affordable housing properties within Nuveen’s diversified portfolio establish a financial identity and build a better financial future.”

Nuveen is a large investment manager with $156 billion AUM with 85 years in real estate.

The facility is enabled through a partnership with proptech firm Esusu, which “[reports] rent payments to major credit bureaus to help renters boost their credit scores, all while helping owners and property managers maximize returns.”

Nuveen didn’t mention the latter part. Esusu explains that operators can see “a 25% increase in on-time rent payments,” presumably because people don’t want to hurt their credit reports. “Plus, 2/3 residents prefer apartments with rent reporting,” the company says. It also states that a landlord can save “an average of $20,000 per prevented eviction and gain access to Esusu Rent Relief.” The last feature provides “rent relief for residents unable to pay rent, paid directly to owners and property managers” through 0% rent stabilization loans that are repaid over a 12-month period.

Esusu claims that the “average resident’s credit score increased +51 pts in 18 months” using the company’s system. That is marketed as support for a company’s ESG efforts. As the Nuveen press release noted, “Further, Esusu’s dashboard and Impact Reports, which allow owners and operators to include them in their own ESG/Sustainability reports, investor letters, award submissions and more, are valuable additions to Nuveen’s proprietary tools enabling robust financial, impact, and ESG reporting.”

Esusu says its systems are available for more than 2.5 million rental units across all 50 states.

Major credit reporting agencies do accept rent reports and have for years. There have been programs that have tried to put this into regular practice.

Credit Karma reports that a “program aimed at affordable-housing residents helped tenants raise their VantageScore 3.0 credit scores from Experian an average of 42 points — by reporting their rent payments to the major credit bureaus for an average of four months.” The 2019 pilot program was in a Salt Lake City low-income housing development. Goldman Sachs and nonprofit Credit Builders Alliance were involved in running the program. “Participating tenants began the program with VantageScore 3.0 scores averaging 615, a representative from CBA said,” wrote the site. “About four months later, after having their rent payments reported, those scores averaged 657. It’s important to understand that a credit score increase is not automatic with rent payment reporting — outcomes can vary depending on the timeliness of payments and other credit behavior.”